Antipsychotics

Researchers in Japan investigated 139 patients with schizophrenia diagnoses due to be discharged from 19 acute psychiatric units in Japanese hospitals. Polypharmacy and excessive...

  Objective: To determine whether current antipsychotic use among older persons without diabetes is associated with a higher risk of hospital visits for hyperglycemia, as...

Researchers point to the risks of using antipsychotics with youth and caution against the practice.

From UPI: A team of researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found that the serotonin 2c receptor is responsible for weight gain...

In this piece for Psychiatric Services, Dr. Sandra Steingard comments on the implications of a recent meta-analysis demonstrating the positive effects of the therapeutic alliance on pharmacologic...

Cross-sectional analysis by the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University of 456,315 youths enrolled in Medicaid between 1997 and 2006 finds that the...

A Hong Kong study links short "Duration of Untreated Psychosis" (DUP) to better long-term outcome.  The authors propose that factors linked to long DUP...

Common second-generation antipsychotic medications are causing symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder to emerge in many people who previously only had schizophrenia symptoms, according to a...

In the wake of the new study by Dutch researcher Lex Wunderink, it is time for psychiatry to do the right thing and acknowledge that, if it wants to do best by its patients, it must change its protocols for using antipsychotics. The current standard of care, which—in practice—involves continual use of antipsychotics for all patients diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, clearly reduces the opportunity for long-term functional recovery.

The Arkansas Supreme Court today overturned a $1.2 billion judgment against Johnson & Johnson, ruling that laws requiring companies to properly communicate risks and...

A study published online today (May 26, 2012) in Current Psychiatry Reports recommends Zyprexa as "elusive" pharmacologic solution to anorexia nervosa. On the basis...

Over the past two months, Ronald Pies and Allen Frances, in response to a post I had written, wrote several blogs that were meant to serve as an “evidence-based” defense of the long-term use of antipsychotics. As I read their pieces, I initially focused on that core argument they were presenting, but second time through, the aha moment arrived for me. Their blogs, when carefully parsed, make a compelling case that their profession, in their use of antipsychotics as a treatment for multiple psychotic disorders, has done great harm, and continues to do so today.

Law 360 reports that Johnson & Johnson asked a Pennsylvania judge to keep a series of clinical studies related to the drug Risperdal under...

When the neuroleptics-are-necessary-to-treat-schizophrenia myth falls, psychiatry is finished. And that is why the Goff et al paper was produced: a desperate attempt to maintain its position by a profession that is truly on the ropes. For psychiatry this is a death-struggle.

Antipsychotic medications that are commonly being used to help control behaviors in elderly people with dementia seem to be causing premature deaths at high rates.

In a compulsory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Johnson & Johnson indicates an "agreement in principle" with federal prosecutors to "resolve" "criminal...

The US Food and Drug Administration is warning the public that the antipsychotic medication ziprasidone "is associated with a rare but serious skin reaction...

In the 1950s, when the drugs we now call ‘antipsychotics’ first came along, psychiatrists recognised that they were toxic substances that happened to have the ability to suppress thoughts and emotions without simply putting people to sleep in the way the old sedatives did. The mental restriction the drugs produced was noted to be part of a general state of physical and mental inhibition that at extremes resembled Parkinson’s disease. Early psychiatrists didn’t doubt that this state of neurological suppression was potentially damaging to the brain.

Researchers from Germany, Greece and the U.S. reviewed the literature on relapse at 7 to 12 months following initiation of antipsychotic treatment. They conclude...

Experiencing emotional pain is a necessary part of life. Emotional pain often contains valuable lessons to help us on our journeys. We need to make sure we are not numbing our hearts to those that are hurting. We need to de-stigmatize the struggles, joys and pains that come with being human. We need to not just mindlessly pursue happiness - though we might think of that as an inalienable right - and avoid pain. We need to do the only thing that brings true joy: embrace all of life and each other, as we experience together all that makes us human.

From AlterNet: A new book my Art Levine, Mental Health Inc: How Corruption, Lax Oversight and Failed Reforms Endanger Our Most Vulnerable Citizens, exposes the greed...

Analysis of longitudinal data from 2000-2014 demonstrate mortality gap is widening between persons with a diagnosis of bipolar or schizophrenia compared to the general population

Following Johnson & Johnson's $2.2 billion settlement for off-label marketing and kickbacks related to its antipsychotic Risperdal, Pennsylvania legislators Brandon Neuman and Tony DeLuca...

The provincial government health service of Alberta, Canada recently concluded a successful pilot project that reduced the use of antipsychotic medications for patients with...

Once second-generation antipsychotic drugs came on the market (which are known as “atypicals”), there were claims by psychiatric researchers that they would lead to...